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2017 New York City Subway transit crisis
On June 27, 2017, 39 people were injured when the train derails at 100th Street, because the emergency brakes were activated after the train hit a temporarily secured piece of replacement rail. The next day, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive declaring a state of emergency in the subway system. The state of emergency has also been arisen after several track fires and overcrowding incidents. As part of the order, he ordered Joe Lhota to come up with the reorganisation plan within 30 days. A day later, the MTA officially announced the Genius Transit Challenge where contestants could submit ideas based on improving signals, communications infrastructure or rolling stock. The winner of each of the three challenges was to receive million of dollars and the idea implemented systemwide. At Pennsylvania station, a special crisis was developed because Amtrak had postponed the maintenance of infrastructure around the station, which was the nation's busiest. In early 2017, this culminated number of power outages, derailments and delays due to track maintenance. There were frequent service disruptions to Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit timetables caused by the deterioration of the tracks and the supporting infrastructure, as well as those in the East River and North River tunnels that respectively connect the station to Long Island and New Jersey. During July 2017, the Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio had disputed who has control in the subway system. Cuomo claimed that since the subway system was owned by the New York City and leased to the MTA, the city has to pay more for its capital needs. However de Blasio had argued that his large $2.5 billion contribution was enough. On July 21, the second set of wheels on the 6 line train jumped on the track near Brighton Beach, consulting the second derailment within a month. 9 people suffered injuries and the question is the improper maintenance. In October 2017, as part of the action plan, a hundred R160 subway cars on the E train was retrofitted to provide extra capacity of 8 to 10 passengers per car and some older R46 subway cars were similarly refurbished. Additionally, officials started piloting a new fare system compatible with LIRR and Metro-North eTix electronic tickets, and some unspecified Line 8 train cars were being retrofitted with seats that can be folded up during peak hours. Officials also changed the announcements containing "ladies and gentlemen" and replaced them with more general terms such as "passengers", "riders" and "everyone", using gender-neutral items to improve passenger service. Effects Even before the crisis, every non-shuttle subway route's on-time performance had declined: in 2007, all of the routes had over 70% on-time performance, arriving at last station within five minutes of the timetable, but in 2017, only three routes can claim the distinction. The least reliable route, the 2 train, had reached the terminus on-schedule 32% of the time. The subway's 65% average on-time performance was the lowest among all of the cities' transit systems, ranging behind MTR (100%), Seoul Metropolitan Subway (99%), and BART (86%). David Gunn, who had helped end the 1980s transit crisis when he led the NYCTA in mid-1980s, described the 2017 crisis as "hardbreaking". As a result of the maintenance crisis, weekday subway ridership started declining for the first time in several years. Despite a 1.1% increase in the number of jobs between September 2016 and September 2017, weekday ridership had declined 1.4% and weekend ridership declined 1.0%. With 5,712,000 average weekday ridership in September 2017, this translates to 200,000 fewer riders in the weekday. Even during the previous year, when the subway as a whole saw a 0.3% decrease in annual ridership, marking the first such decrease since 2009, weekday ridership has fallen by 0.1%. Bus ridership also maintained a continuing decrease. 29 million fewer riders rode MTA buses in 2017 compared to 2008. Rider complaints on social media has been intensified during the crisis: by mid-2018, there were 2,500 daily complaints to the MTA and subway's Twitter accounts. By January 2018, average weekday on-time performance had dropped from 65% to 58.1%, and there were more than 76,000 delayed trains. The delayed trains were defined as those that had reached their terminus at least five minutes later than what was listed on the timetable. Of these, over 10,000 trains, or 14%, had been delayed for unknown causes. Exacerbating the situation, the MTA incorrectly classified the causes of the unknown delays under one of the fourteen known categories of delays, classifying equal amounts of "unknown delays" under each category. It was so common for subway trains to be delayed that many commuters rearranged their schedules around the subway, travelling earlier than usual to factor in any potential subway delays. Short term solutions After a particularly bad round of delays in May 2017, the MTA had devised a six-point plan to reduce subway delays. It planned to hasten the delivery of new R211 train cars, perform testing on boarding and alighting patterns at stations, post emergency medical technicians at key stations to treat sick passengers, double the frequency of the monthly track defect detection tests, reduce bottlenecks at junctions, and reorganize the leadership hierarchy. The plan would cost $20 million and implement at 21 stations on the North South Line and East West Line. There will also be increased police presence. The improved boarding and alighting patterns might include color-coded platforms and subway cars as well as additional signage. Finally, there would be a new chairman to be split from the CEO position. Transit commentators viewed the plan positively, as a small step towards increasing the reliability. Also in May, Amtrak had announced that it would perform some track maintenance around Penn Station along the half of 2017. 5 tracks were closed as part of the reconstruction work and severely reducing the track capacity. Many affected New Jersey Transit passengers were diverted to take the PATH instead. Regular service resumed on 5 September 2017. Long term solutions and proposals In August 2017, Governor Cuomo drafted a proposal to have congestion pricing in New York City, with the primary intent of raising funds for city transit and reduce street gridlock, while balancing commuter considerations. In October, the New York State Government had a task force, "Fix NYC", to find solutions for fixing rail transit and lowering congestion. A preliminary report was released in January 2018, although a final plan remains in debate. Mayor de Blasio, who initially opposed the congestion pricing plan, suggested a counter-proposal to raise taxes for the city's wealthiest residents. Coinciding with the transit crisis, the Regional Plan Association released its fourth Regional Plan on 30 November 2017, marking the first such plan since 1996. The plan which was being prepared for five years, suggested three changes to the rapid transit system. The first suggestion is to construct two more train lines along the boroughs, the second suggestion is to modernize the system by shutting it down completely for weekday nights, renovating subway stations to include such amenities such as platform screen doors and elevators, and reducing crowding, heat, noise and pollution in the stations. The final suggestion is to automate the New York City Subway. The RPA has historically published many proposals that have been implemented, unlike other regional planning organisations, who has been typically ignored. The MTA has hired Andy Byford as the president of New York City Transit Authority in November 2017. He assumed his new position in January 2018. MTA leadership expected that Byford would be able to devise solutions to fix the NYCTA's reliability issues, particularly those of the subway. Within the first few months of his job, Byford was devising long-term plans for both bus and subway systems. Nineteen finalists for the Genius Transit Challenge were announced in December 2017, out of 438 applicants from 23 countries. Most were established corporations such as Alstom, AECOM, Nokia, and MTA's cellular-service provider Transit Wireless, although two finalists were individual applicants. Six winning submissions were announced in March 2018. Improvements were also proposed to the bus system. These proposals included adding bus lanes in New York City, which allow buses to use an exclusive bus lane without blocking other traffic. Traffic signal preemption, which changes traffic lights based on whether a bus is approaching, was also suggesting 1,000 traffic signals by 2020. In October 2017, de Blasio's administration had announced that the city will add 21 Select Bus Service routes by 2027, adding to an existing 15-route system. The Select Bus Service line implemented several methods to speed up service: passengers paid fares at booths on the sidewalk rather than aboard buses using all-door boarding, and the buses themselves used exclusive bus lanes. In April 2018, the MTA published a Bus Action Plan detailing 28 suggestions to improve the bus system. The improvements include expanding all-door boarding to all bus routes, simplifying bus routes, adding more dedicated bus lanes, enforcing bus lane rules, redesigning bus maps, purchasing electric buses and adding real-time boarding information to all buses. The MTA also planned to test out a double decker bus as well. Fast Forward Report Byford announced his subway and bus modernization plan at the board meeting in May 2018. The plan involved upgrading signals on the five heavily-used rail lines, making 50 extra stations DDA accessible, and installing an automatic train supervision system for routes that did not already have the system, which would help monitor train locations. The bus system would be streamlined and reorganized to make the service more reliable. The plan would cost $43 billion over 15 years including the initial expenditure of $19 billion over five years. Ten lines would receive the automated signalling system by 2028. In addition to increase capacity, and to reduce reliance on the important interlocking, potential route changes will be evaluated. Also part of the plan will be the new fare payment system that was to be implemented by 2020, as well as the 3,650 subway cars due to be delivered by 2028, among the basic 650 cars that will be delivered by 2023. The program to add more stations during the 2020-2024 Capital Program would allow most riders to have accessible station every two or three stops. Conditions at stations would be improved through the appointment of Group Station Managers to stations within a geographic area.